Bouzouki Pioneer, 1932-1940

March 1, 2011

“Shortly before I was called up, in 1924 or early 1925, I happened to hear Nikos playing bouzoœki and I liked it so much that I swore an oath that if I didn’t learn to play I’d cut my hand off with the meat cleaver . . . he couldn’t believe it . . . in six months I’d become a `terror’ on the instrument. . . . No one had given me lessons. My only school was the tekŽ.” –From the autobiography of M‡rkos Vamvak‡ris M‡rkos, the “Patriarch” of the bouzoœki, was born dirt poor on the island of Syros and came up in the slums of Piraeus. “. . . there I was initiated into the harsh life of a working man, married for the first time, got hooked on hashish, and, above all, was seduced by that instrument — the bouzoœki.” “The man was an inexhaustible river. If he’d lived a thousand years, he’d have gone on writing beautiful Rembetica.” –Spyros Gar’zas